<P>'Fractured Landscapes' Rosemary Butcher-choreographer<BR>Holborn Studios London 1997 <P><BR>PRESS RELEASE<P><BR><B>ROSEMARY BUTCHER COMPANY<P>London premiere - Still-Slow-Divided</B><P>Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London WC1<P>Friday 7 & Saturday 8 June<P>Rosemary Butcher Company - double bill<P>Still-Slow-Divided & Fragmented Landscapes, Fragmented Narratives<P><BR>Since the mid-seventies, Rosemary Butcher has been the UK's most consistently radical and innovative choreographer, developing her own movement language and choreographic form. Through her determination to remain an independent artist, her use of cross arts collaboration within the choreographic process and her frequent choice of non-theatrical spaces to present her work, she has changed the direction of British contemporary dance.<P>In Still-Slow-Divided, a new Rosemary Butcher quartet, individual dancers occupy separate light defined spaces with movement juxtaposed between one space and another, with the illuminated environment and a curtain emphasising the collision of physical energy around the proximity of the light installation.<P>Still-Slow-Divided was initially inspired by the taking-off and landing skills of parachutists and para-gliders within a defined space. In order to translate observation into a movement language the dancers undertook lessons in the technique of rock climbing and abseiling at a climbing school in East London. Through this training the dancers played with gravity, by working with ropes, climbing to high levels then free falling. It is in these techniques of rock climbing that are the foundation of the movement vocabulary used in Still-Slow-Divided, with nothing taken literally. The dancers then used their experiences to develop a movement language through improvisation in the studio with Rosemary Butcher constantly abstracting those functional tasks into a structure, finally integrating them into the finished choreographed work. The idea of containment is reflected in the light installation, the sound-scape and with the choreography, the completed work weaving together the real sensations learned from the training with an abstract use of movement in space.<P>Fractured landscapes, Fragmented narratives is a duet exploring the transformation of the shape and identity of the body from actual to projected space, with the structure of the choreography exploring dependency and independence through weight and balance. Presented as an installation performance using new technology, emotional tension emerges from the physical complexity of the ensuing images.<P>With a camera directed on the dancers within the performance, individual movements are frozen and emphasised, the image on the screen displacing and refocusing their bodies, resulting in the integration of the performance and the projection as a collage of sound and images. <P>********************************<P>Rosemary Butcher Company double bill<P>Still-Slow-Divided & Fragmented Landscapes, Fragmented Narratives<P>Fri 7 & Sat 8 June at 8pm<P>Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London WC1 Box Office: 020 7387 0031<P>Background notes:<P>For nearly three decades, Rosemary Butcher has been the UK's most consistently radical and innovative choreographer. Profoundly influenced by her time in New York, 1970-72, she encountered the work of the Judson Movement at its height, subsequently introducing those ideas to Britain at her 1976 ground breaking concert in London's Serpentine Gallery. Since then, Butcher has developed her own movement language and choreographic form based around conceptual art, pure movement and a complex use of space that has influenced and inspired three generations of British choreographers, most notably Sue McLennan, Russell Maliphant, Laurie Booth and Jonathan Burrows. By her determination to remain an independent artist, her use of cross arts collaboration within the choreographic process and her frequent choice of non- theatrical spaces to present her work, she has changed the direction of British contemporary dance. <P>Rosemary Butcher is presently head of choreography at the Laban Centre London, from where several of her recent students are already gaining prominence in the European dance scene. <P>

<B>Reviews Shaken, but not stirred</B><BR>By Michael Seaver in The Irish Times<P><BR>Cunningham may have taken dance back to the Abbey last week, but Rosemary Butcher's performance at the Green and Red Gallery rekindled shorter memories of the old Lombard Street Studios, home of many Irish and international dance performances in the past 20 years. Its transformation from theatre to gallery was reciprocated on stage, as the audience sat around a square white dance floor marked out with black gaffa tape, like a framed blank canvas for the performers.<P>The setting and its intimacy reflect the ideas and ideals of choreographer Rosemary Butcher, a major figure in British new dance (but hardly, as the programme asserts, "indisputably the single most influential figure"). Many claim that she creates not as a theatrical choreographer but as a visual artist, and Scan gives credence to that thinking. Four dancers enter the space and immediately pair off as strips of light are projected from above.<P><A HREF="http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2002/0515/1240163963C_A.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

I've consolidated a couple of topics:<P>Review in the Telegraph.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>It is not quite right to call Rosemary Butcher a choreographer - theatrographer might be closer, if there were such a word. Because, though she puts movement and space together, her purpose and the result itself are not dance, as such, at all. <P>Space is to the dancer what silence is to the actor; a place to invade or respect. Butcher's pieces generally have few dancers and minimal movement, and their physical presence is tightly concentrated, layered with video or lighting that combine to make the space vibrate like a fourth dimension.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/06/10/btbutch10.xml&sSheet=/arts/2002/06/10/ixartright.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited June 10, 2002).]

<B>Some falls with grace</B><BR>by Sarah Frater in The Evening Standard<P><BR>Rosemary Butcher's choreography requires a degree of commitment rarely called for in today's theatre. Unlike many dance-makers who lull the senses with virtuoso technique or easy melody, you cannot watch Butcher and not commit your wits. With her, you have to look hard and think harder, and even then her densely-packed work is not easily discerned, at least not for those beyond the small world of dance insiders. <P>And so it was last Friday when Butcher's tiny troupe performed at The Place. <P>The double bill comprised one old and one new work, both intriguing, although the latter proved more compelling. <P><A HREF="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/theatre/dance_review.html?in_review_id=570110&in_review_text_id=578372" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Review in The Independent.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Rosemary Butcher's new piece is a stunner, made by a choreographer who has been treading her radical path for almost 30 years and just gets better and better. The title may be a puzzle, but Still-Slow-Divided achieves its impact through a superlative fusion of choreography, sound and light, all equally perfect.<P>Although always in charge, Butcher works collaboratively, guiding her dancers into inventing movement which she then sifts and organises. For the genesis of this piece, she had her four dancers study the moves of parachuting and rock-climbing, so that they could recycle them into dance. Sounds like unlikely material for compelling choreography? On the contrary: the motifs of tugging, lunging and falling have an on-the-edge intensity that has you clutching the sides of your seat. Certain postures are recognisable– the magnificent Lauren Potter tying an invisible rope around her waist, Paul Clayden yanking with his arms, Potter carrying Mark Lorimer on her back. But because these movements are viewed from unexpected angles and extrapolated, they become abstracted. The dancers cease to be sky-divers or climbers. Rather, they have the body language of people in some non-specified extremity – people pushed to an emotional brink perhaps, or in physical danger, fighting imbalance and gravity, desperately helping each other.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/reviews/story.jsp?story=304793" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Review in The Sunday Times.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Rosemary Butcher is a British independent choreographer whose meticulous, highly concentrated style of movement, often devised as part of cross-arts collaborations, is more likely to be seen in non- theatre spaces (such as galleries) than in regular dance houses. But she brought her company of four to the Robin Howard Dance Theatre at The Place last weekend, with a double bill that, by dispensing with the stage wings, made this space look unusually expansive. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-324796,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Rosemary Butcher Company presents the UK premiere of WHITE, the latest full-length work from award winning and iconic British choreographer Rosemary Butcher, a multi-media dance work inspired by Captain Scott’s and Mawson’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition.

“ Mawson decided to turn north ….. when he was suddenly plummeted downwards with the fearful rush of Nightmare. As the rope and harness attaching him to the sledge unravelled, so did his hope. But then he was arrested by a mighty jerk, which felt as if it might remove his weakened arms. The rope pulled up, and he was suspended, slowly revolving fourteen feet into a giant grave of ice. He felt the sledge tugged by his weight towards the lid of the crevasse. So this is the end he thought.”

The White – Last Days in the Antarctic Journeys of Scott and Mawson, 1911-13 by Adrian Caeser

Since the mid-seventies, Rosemary Butcher has been the UK’s most consistently radical and innovative choreographer, developing her own movement language and choreographic form. Through her determination to remain an independent artist, her use of cross arts collaboration within the choreographic process and her frequent choice of non-theatrical spaces to present her work, she has changed the direction of British contemporary dance.

Butcher’s latest full-length work, WHITE was inspired by reports of Captain Scott’s ill-fated 1911-13 Antarctic expedition and descriptions of survival in the Siberian Arctic. In WHITE, a work for three dancers, Butcher treads new choreographic and structure paths utilising a multi-screen video projection, featuring the work of German filmmaker Martin Otter, a specially composed soundscape score by British composer Cathy Lane and lighting design by Charles Balfour. The physical and emotional predicaments facing a polar explorer are the focal points of Rosemary Butcher’s concept. The dancers initially respond to various visual stimuli, including weather charts and maps of the polar region. The dancers develop the movement in counterpoint with the screen images, which they are surrounded by, and the contrast of live performance and recorded material provides the dynamic between the two.

Rosemary Butcher Company presents WHITE

Thur 12 & 13 Fri February 2004 @ 7.45pm

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 Box Office: 020 7960 4242

Notes:

For nearly three decades, Rosemary Butcher has been the UK's most consistently radical and innovative choreographer. Profoundly influenced by her time in New York, 1970-72, she encountered the work of the Judson Movement at its height, subsequently introducing those ideas to Britain at her 1976 ground breaking concert in London's Serpentine Gallery. Since then, Butcher has developed her own movement language and choreographic form based around conceptual art, pure movement and a complex use of space that has influenced and inspired three generations of British choreographers, most notably Sue McLennan, Russell Maliphant, Laurie Booth and Jonathan Burrows. By her determination to remain an independent artist, her use of cross arts collaboration within the choreographic process and her frequent choice of non-theatrical spaces to present her work, she has changed the direction of British contemporary dance.

Rosemary Butcher was the recipient of the 2002 major Jerwood Choreography Award. Her two most recent works, SCAN and STILL-SLOW-DIVIDED both received great critical acclaim, in the UK and abroad.

Four books have informed the concept of WHITE

· The White: Last Days in the Antarctic Journeys of Scott and Mawson, 1911-13 by Adrian Caeser

· Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer by Margott Morrell and Stephanie Capparell.

· Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape by Barry Lopez

· In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic by Valerian Albanov

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